THE BRIEF “ Design a new brand identity for Fat Salad to take to festivals and more in 2014 “
Fat Salad came to Birmingham City University with a design problem, although Fat Salad had branded themselves previously, they didn’t feel like the identity worked. They wanted to keep a similar feel to their current design but with more of an edge, one of their key problems was the logo not being legible in a smaller form, for example on their website. The challenge was to create a new logo and packaging design. Fat Salad began when the creators decided there were not enough healthy food options at festivals in the UK. Fat Salad decided to create a new range of healthy veggie salads to feed the hungry festival goers, they wanted to be edgy, and not the old ‘health freak’ personality of other healthy food traders, they wanted a quirky but slick feel in their branding. Fat Salad have now decided to go further than festivals and start trading at busy London train stations to feed the busy commuters, they also have future plans of placing their Fat Salads in supermarkets.
RESEARCH & STYLE “I don’t want Fat Salad to look just healthy, I want it to say we are HIP, we are COOL and a cut above the rest.” - Fat Salad Fat Salad gave veuve clicquot as an example of a logo style they liked, followed by innocent smoothies personality as an example of the ‘feel’ they wanted to portray. LC (head of Fat Salad) wanted a sort of tattoo feel to the designs, and to make it ‘cool’ and edgy to stand out from the rest.
LOGO DESIGN I started looking at logo design, LC wanted the logo to have some aspects of the older logo i.e. a heart or sporks, so I experimented with these ideas, as well as a ribbon idea that was taken also from the original logo. I kept the colour red within the logo as I felt this colour really represented Fat Salad well and took it away from the ‘Healthy green’ feel that LC was not looking for. I introduced a few patterns, made sure the colour scheme was solid and the brand started to come together. My initial design did change a lot throughout working with LC but that’s what you get when you are working with clients – although she liked my original designs, she had an image in mind and trusted me to achieve this.
EXPERIMENTATION
Brown paper texture was LC’s idea, she wanted to give Fat Salad an organic feel. I gave Fat Salad alot of different examples of packaging mock-ups, we narrowed them down to a few and chose a basic design that would send the right, clear message that Fat Salad wanted to portray.
PACKAGING
The colours for the boxes were chosen by myself after a lot of testing with what prints best on brown paper, of course the final would be printed using expensive printers and materials but just in case of emergency printing and Fat Salad wanting to be a little more independent I tested colour palettes onto brown paper to find out which colours stood out the most.
FAT BOXES OF HEALTHY STUFF
FESTIVAL STAND & T-SHIRTS
Along with the packaging Fat Salad needed an impressive presence at festivals, LC contacted me with a range of ideas from rainbows, b-hives and castles and finally a French patisserie idea for the festival stand. My personal idea was a Boom Box as they have been given a licence to play music this year, I thought the slogan could be something like ‘booming with healthy stuff’ which would fit in well with their brand, this idea may be implemented next year. Fat Salad also needed staff t-shirts that have been designed and will be screen printed.
WEBSITE The main idea LC communicated to me was the length of the website, she liked the idea of scrolling web pages rather than page by page, so I worked on this. I wanted to bring Fat Salad into the 21st century. These current designs resemble the packaging so there is consistency within the brand, it is quirky and a little different from some modern day websites, I took inspiration from the Innocent smoothies website. The scroller banner with the menu links scrolls with the page so when you scroll down on each page you can still use the navigation at all times. So finally I have continued working on the Fat Salad website and have become part of the team. From this great opportunity with Fat Salad I have not only gained a contact but an opportunity to get more experience in the future, I have been placed on the payroll and am now Fat Salad’s appointed designer, its great to achieve something like this and hope to get a lot more out of the opportunity in future.
designed by Harriet Hamilton-Jones Hamilton-Jones. Designed